Finally!

Thank God. I was wondering when someone would step up and show the world this record was only unbreakable in our hearts and minds.

Clicky: Man Breaks Underwater Cycling World Record

I would have done it myself if I'd had scuba equipment, a bike I wanted to ruin, and any previous inkling that such a record existed. Seriously, can you just make up records to break? I currently hold the world record for being made up of the genotype I'm made up of - 34 years.

And counting!

An interesting note from the article, Mr. Vittorio Innocente says he wants to show that you can bike anywhere. Great, now prove it's a good idea. Actually, since he's doing it for charity, it's still a good idea.

My new filing technique is unstoppable

That's not just a reference to this reliable chestnut of Internet humor.

It's also the awesome truth. Or the sad truth if you consider how long it took me to get here.

I'm not terribly organized as a rule. I'm lucky to be smart enough to fake it most of the time, but there's a limit. I passed that limit, if we're going to be honest, in college some time. That's (carry the twelve . . .) a billion years ago now.

So, during my recent ample free time I decided to get my goddamn act together. I picked up a copy of a book recommended by the good folks over at boingboing.net called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I'm universally leery of self-help and/or business books - they're all written at the 3rd to 4th grade reading level and tend to be littered with advice that insults most peoples' intelligence - but so far boingboing hasn't steered me wrong.

In tandem with the "Finish Rich Workbook", Getting Things Done provided a context for filing. It sounds daft even as I write it, but let's be honest, the actual process of filing is not that tough if you have a good (or frankly even just consistent) grasp of the alphabet. There are two difficult bits:

1. Creating a place for everything to go;
2. Understanding why you should put things in their places rather than say, on the floor, under the bed, or most usually, in a pile next to (or, good grief, under) other piles.

Once you have a place for everything (Finish Rich Workbook), and an understanding of why things go there (Gettting Things Done), the act of filing is simple. And, and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this because let's face it I'm geeky enough as is, empowering? I understand now why my stepfather gets so excited about "wizardizing". You feel as though you're getting stuff done.

Unless you've already got your own system of filing, you probably don't understand this post at all. Actually, it may be that you had to be a total disaster like myself to really appreciate the transformation. Some people just seem fantastically organized all the time.

I file those people under "bastard".

I'm totally getting a new iPhone . . .

Just not yet apparently.

I talked to a rather harried-sounding bloke down at the Apple-Store-cum-iPhone-store and he told me that while they had a small number of iPhones left today, there was a line out the door that was clocking in at, hold on let me check, oh a four hour wait.

When I asked if he had any idea when the feeding frenzy was going to stop, he sounded almost as though he was about to cry. "I thought it would be over by now." Poor guy.

I'll get my phone once the lunacy is over. That meshes nicely with my earlier plan of waiting to hear if anything really crappy started to happen with them or if the battery life became a problem.

I like this

Joss Whedon reliably throws good stories together.

You should probably look at this since Joss Whedon seems to have written it and it's got Doogie Howser and Mal in it: http://www.drhorrible.com/

Awesome

This takes me back to two separate portions of my life. The most obvious being when I lived in NYC. The other being when I would do crazy reckless things.

Enjoy:

Back in Reston, back online

Hey Verizon stopped by today and totally hooked me up with broadband and HDTV. On top of all that, the interface for using the cable is just a lot easier than the crap I had to put up with from Comcast.

I'm growing further convinced that interface is the edge these days. Apple broke stirringly into the cell phone market using primarily interface changes. BMW keeps getting hammered for that nonsense iDrive doodly do that no one can use. And Comcast made me suffer through that terrible terrible interface they had to the point where I was happy for any out I could find.

I only watch about 5 hours of TV a week, if that, but I don't want those precious moments marred by frustration. There are still a lot of interfaces to be improved, and I think that players who can fix them in markets where they're broken (DVDs - and frankly anywhere else IP protection gets in the way of ease-of-use - I'm looking at yous) stand to corner the market.

Verizon is, however, bringing yearly contracts to the table. That's an unnecessary frustration, right? I'm sure it's a large investment to send folks out to link houses up (even after laying the cables), but you'd imagine getting more people out of the gate would offset the one-time hook up costs.

Still, it's good to be back online so I won't complain just yet.

small town adventure

Maverick is a bit of a twit.

Today when we went for breakfast (at that restaurant I hate, yes, I know), there was a very eager dog (a shitzu I think) scampering around the parking lot trying to make friends, run under cars, the usual.

One of the folks we were meeting for breakfast is an inveterate animal saver. Last week at breakfast she told us all about the ferret she saved in the woods (MSU has a lot of students, and this time of year is when irresponsible students ditch their unwanted pets). Anyway, Kathy saw the dog and got that unmistakable look in her eye.

More for Kathy than for the dog, I offered the use of our back yard - which is fenced in - for dog storage while we ate breakfast and decided what to do with the pooch. I used my cell phone to call the dog-grooming place right next door to the restaurant, in case it had been boarded there and escaped, but it was 8:15 at this point and no one answered.

Eventually, we hatched the plan to call the animal control people and foist the problem off on them. That's why they're there after all. But this was going to have to wait until Kathy was done with some errands. Meanwhile, I threw a stick for the dog in the back yard. He was not a bright dog. Or he's deaf perhaps. Full of energy, but dumb.

Anyway, speaking of dumb, as I was playing with the pooch it (finally) occurred to me that I could take a picture of him with my phone. After a torturous period getting the little bastard to sit still enough that I could shoot the pic, I called the now-open grooming shop and asked if they boarded dogs. No, no they don't. Okay, well, does this dog sound familiar? Wait a sec, I'll send you a picture.

A few moments later i got a call back and it turns out that Maverick is well known to the ladies of the doggy salon. So, the dog is back in the hands of people who love him, Kathy is very glad to have the weight off her mind, and I'm psyched that my (cheap cheap phone) managed to enable some fancy communication.

Lively?

I just tried out Lively, Google's answer to Second Life.

It's a virtual world that uses your browser as the client software. You can read more about it here on Google's blog.

If you need to hug when you go to blogs, this might be the technology for you. I'm not sure I need the social web quite that much up in my grill, but I've read Stephenson's "Snow Crash", so I understand this might be a step in a potentially fruitful direction.

Still, why Google? For a long time I've resisted the urge to call Google evil just because they have all my data and know everything I've ever done online. Creepy. Now I wonder if they're becoming evil by mistake.

In a world where business plans end with "Step 3: Sell to Google/MS/Yahoo", I think we have to start worrying about how monopolizing audience and/or coding talent limits the creativity of the web.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but we're seeing this disturbing trend of a few major players buying up or co-opting the entire web. So Google, just because you can compete with SecondLife doesn't mean you have to. You're a search engine, remember? How long before they start selling books?

On the other hand, Lively is a pain to use so far. Maybe this is a flash in the pan.

Meanwhile, here's a view of Google through Lively (or not, I don't know. I'm just embedding a Lively room because I can.):

I knew it!

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9421

This validates men and English people everywhere!

Ups (. . . and downs)

At least today wasn't boring.

I got a follow-up on some ActionScripting work. I've been working on it all day and I think I've got a pretty good start. It should bring in enough money that I can eat this month. Yay for eating!

I also got email from my buddy that we're getting closer to some of my writing going up on MSNBC, which is a big deal for me. Moreover, I may get to write stuff that's more complicated than what I've done so far. I choose to view that as a "promotion". On the other hand, I also choose to believe that I'm hanging out behind the Gas 'n' Sip alone on a Saturday night by choice, so maybe I'm not the best judge (who spotted the reference? Anyone? . . . Okay, anyone other than Helen?).

On the down side, I had to go to a nearby restaurant with M. today and this restaurant is a haunt of the local oldies. It smelled vaguely of urine this afternoon and made me sad, so sad. It's a restaurant where you absolutely order with a whimper rather than a bang. I feel I should get a menu to hang on my mirror to remind me daily of the dangers of aging, to remind me not to go gently into (this eatery whose name I've redacted), but I'll be damned if I'm going back there ever again. Ain't happening.

Finally, I got a CD (I know, how quaint right?) that I ordered through the pony express. It's by a band called Lexicon and contains the song "Rock". It makes me happy just to hear it and the chorus makes this song one that many people love but few know the name to. I'll do you all a favor and point you at their MySpace page. Play "Rock". You'll thank me. (however, it's the only song I like on the album)

The fourth of July

After two mojitos each, M. and I are in a festive spirit. We just ate chips and salsa out back, M. all the while lamenting that if we ate any more we'd spoil dinner. Well, dinner is spoiled and now we're having melon with prosciutto and then corn on the cob.

We're listening to a newly created Pandora station that I seeded with "sousa". M.'s more interested in this application of the Internet than anything else we've seen thus far.

It played a Sousa something or other, followed immediately by the can-can, the theme to Star Wars, and something from the Nutcracker.

It's a totally absurd sound-track to a funny evening.

Happy 4th everyone.